Counting My Blessings

With a new year about to begin, on New Year’s Eve I looked back over 2024 in order to count all of my blessings. I am very grateful to God for every gift that He gives, and this past year, I’m especially grateful for many joys, like:

my father successfully coming through an internal surgery, and my mother successfully coming through her own internal surgery plus cataract surgery;

my mother and my father;

my sister getting a new job with less stress, a shorter commute, and, yes, a higher salary;

my brother-in-law’s faith (as always, and continuing, thank God) and his introducing me to The Bible in a Year Podcast with Fr. Mike Schmitz (and now The Catechism in a Year for 2025);

my oldest nephew’s safe and amazing exploration of Europe as he studied abroad, and his most important joy — the woman who became his fiancée;

his fiancée and her family;

my youngest nephew’s newfound commitment and enthusiasm for his chosen career path, and his reaching out to his professors who have become mentors and friends;

his good professors;

the great nurse who took care of me for over two years, who was able to move on to another job that better supports her family;

finding a new caregiver (who actually found me), who is skilled, experienced, reliable, and a pleasure to spend time with given her warmth, good taste, and great sense of humor;

having two more poems appear in anthologies;

getting my first short story accepted for publication — it will appear in a new, local arts and literature periodical coming up next year;

retiring as my parish’s webmaster and Facebook administrator after 10 years of volunteering;

the happy celebration of my 50^th birthday (gulp) and a very Merry Christmas;

coming through the worst chest cold I ever had, weeks of coughing and struggling to breathe, continually denied air, that resulted in a closer relationship with God’s Word in Sacred Scripture and trust in His plan;

being able to complete nine consecutive First Fridays of receiving Holy Communion as part of my Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (yay! Thank you, God! And thank you to my parents for bringing me to Concord for eight months and Fr. Roarke Traynor who brought the Eucharist to me at home when I was still very sick in August);

getting back to work on my memoir as 2024 turned into 2025…

and more!

Always grateful for you, dear reader, I’ll wrap up this first blog post for 2025 (doesn’t that sound so weirdly sci-fi?)

© 2025 Christina Chase

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Feature Photo by Crazy nana on Unsplash

Pax Christi

Christina